Lampson/Thacker to do Dynabook?

Truls Cronberg truls.cronberg at home.se
Wed Sep 1 16:15:01 UTC 1999


Well, the dynabook exists already. I read all papers I could find about
Alan Kay's idea about dynabook.  It exists as a physical computer. The
Powerbook is a perfect example. All features are there and people are using
the computer in described ways. That part that is weakest on the Powerbook
and dito machines are the dynamic software environment, but exist when
Squeak is installed. All examples of Dynabook (and the other similar ideas
from Alan Kay that I have found) all  have keyboard.

Taking away the keyboard and touch pad/mouse and subsitute it with a pen is
great. I want such computer in education ( I am a teacher).  I would be
able to create completely new application that would take education to a
new pedagogical level.  I have several application in my drawing board
waiting for the computer.

By the way there already exists a penbased computer as is like Dynabook but
without keyboard and touch pad - made by Fujitsu - and it runs NT or W95.
What I know of, it is not targeted education, though.

The "penbased " computer market - inlcuding Palm and such - looks like the
computer market before IBM PC was introduced.

/Truls

>Yet another project to do a Dynabook. Maybe they'll be able to get further
>than the ones I've been involved with?  (Annoyingly, this requires a (free)
>subscription.)
>
>
>WILL THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING BE WRITTEN ON A TABLET?
>Enlisting the talents of two computer designers who were part of Alan Kay's
>legendary team at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s, Microsoft
>has plans for developing a portable, wireless, keyboardless "tablet
>computer."  Although generally similar devices developed by Apple, Go Corp.,
>and AT&T were commercial failures in the past decade, Microsoft is betting
>that the current rapid convergence of display, processing, storage and other
>technologies is finally setting the stage for commercial tablet computers
>using handwriting or speech input.  (One recent development has been
>Microsoft's introduction of its Cleartype software that improves the
>readability of fonts on flat panel computer displays.)  The two designers
>who will lead the new Microsoft tablet computer effort are Chuck Thacker and
>Butler Lampson.  Lampson says, "I think this will be the way most people
>interact with the Net and the rest of the computing universe as well."
>Thacker injects a personal note:  "I've always wanted this kind of device,
>and in systems research one of the most motivating things is that you want
>the device yourself."  (New York Times 30 Aug 99)
>http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+site+82844+0+wAA
>A+tablet%7Eand%7E%22research%7Ecenter%22
>
>
>
>--
>New: It comes in different colors from the previous version.
>Tim Rowledge:  rowledge at interval.com (w)  +1 (650) 842-6110 (w)
> tim at sumeru.stanford.edu (h)  <http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim>





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